This morning we had a leisurely start. Getting up was almost at 8 for Kas and me. Then we had breakfast and lifted the anchor only thereafter.

At my anchor i have, beside the normal 10 mm chain, anchor rope which is attached to the anchor that a stuck anchor can be lifted with this rope. Today, I had, for the first time since sailing in Greek waters in 2019, such a situation. I just pulled on the anchor rope and the anchor got free. An anchor rope is sometimes a hassle but it’s worth in situations like today.

As we had glassy sea, we just motored the 2 NM over to El Porvenir. When we arrived, I was surprised about the size of the island and the few houses there. Much tinier than I thought. The island is just looking enough to built a runway for single engine planes with a maximum of 6 passengers including the he pilots.

At the most likely best anchor spot, there was a cat at anchor, but just left when I searched a spot to drop the anchor.

We barely had dropped the hook, but not have tested the holding, when the first dugout with 3 ladies and a child arrive to sell us molas. During testing the anchor I had to look more for the ladies in their dugout, than I could focus on the anchor situation. At the end, I had 3 dugouts around MaRe and all wanted to sell their molas. Finally anchor was in and had a solid grip.

In the afternoon we took the tender to the next island, very densely populated. We were allowed to tie up our tender and walk around at the island. We wanted to buy also some food.

At each corner, the guna ladies offered their molas. We could have bought hundreds, then they would have asked us to buy another hundred. It doesn’t feel good having to say “no” but it’s necessary. At the end I bought two more molas because they really are nice.

Also it is very interesting to walk through their island, see their life, their cottages, etc., it also gives me the feeling of being an intruder. This, although I’m smiling and greeting the people very friendly use my 3 1/2 words of Spanish.

One thing a saw again, is the cleanliness of their island. The people of Panama – outside guna yala – and the whole Caribbean of what I’ve seen so far, should have a look at guna yala and how they keep their island clean. The guna show the whole world that is possible to keep environment clean. But the world doesn’t look or better doesn’t want to look.

The only garbage, which can be seen, is the garbage from other countries including rich countries who are, sometimes, so proud of their garbage treatment but still throw enough garbage into the sea.

If all countries don’t adopt within 10 years the guna way of keeping environment clean, this globe, the only one we have, will get drowned in plastic garbage. You might call me a pessimist, but think about my words in only 5 years from now. No ocean-clean-up project, no river clean up project, no take3forthesea initiative will be enough to stop the the plastic to stop the plastic tsunami rolling on to us since plastic became so convenient after WW II.

Ste and I left finally to have a look at El Porvenir. Their is a tiny little building for the airport administration and tower. All done by one person. Their is a hotel, an immigration office, a border patrol boa, a “congresso” building for the Gunas, and few cottages for tourist. The biggest construction there is the runway. 8 – 10 m wide and few hundred meter long. That’s it

Ste asked if we can have a dinner at the hotel restaurant. The cook said “No” but the owner said Yes. So we got our dinner. The choice of the day: chicken, fish, or octopus. Not bad.

Yesterday we spent walking the islands of Naguachirdup and Kagandup.

Naguachirdup is San island already prepared for tourist. Their is an all-in package: USD 265.- pickup at Panama City int Airport (PTY), transport to the island, 2 nights, and 3 meals included.

Freshwater for showers comes from a well, pumped up into a tank about 5 m high. Drinking water is collected rainwater.

A restaurant and bar is there as well. It can be safely assumed that the island belongs to one family, and the oldest man has the saying.

We also went to Kagandup, only 300 m away, and asked for permission to walk over the islands. A bit accidentally we asked the oldest man on the island. He welcome us and asked for a bit of money. We gave him 5 USD; he seemed to be satisfied.

The islands was nice because of the dense population with palm trees. Something we only could see from the sea so far. Trees provide shadow, and it seems that they also keep the ground moisture. But we needed to take care of the coconuts which fell down once in a while from the trees. Don’t want to get one on my head.

We had clothes on board which we could give away. The about 6 people of islands did wear rather worn out clothes (except for the elderly lady who wears traditional guna clothes). Kas had the idea to ask if they want to exchange clothes for coconuts. Coconuts is a still important currency in guna yala. We asked first the younger of the two ladies and when “exchange for coconuts” was mentioned, she asked us to talk to the “island owner”, the oldest man of the islands. He is the owner also of the coconuts. And he agreed to barter clothes for coconuts.

We told him we come around 1600 with clothes. Thanks to my Japanese sailing friend Shi, I have pretty good clothes to barter on board. I took half of it.

Later, back to the island, the old man looked into the bag, and a happy smile was to be seen. He talked briefly with the 2 ladies and placed the bag just outside of the sleeping cottage. The ladies did not look inside the bag as long as we could see it. Then he walked to a partially completed concrete and stone building. There was a big plastic bag with coconuts. He gave us 7 coconuts already taken out of the thick outer layer, the fibrous husk. We could have gotten more, but we kept it at 7. Never be greedy! We had an interesting barter.

We also learned that they want to build a little restaurant in this concrete done building and will open it next month. Let’s see. I might come back.

From there were took off to the Naguachirdup where we asked for a dinner at 1700 to still go back to MaRe with the last daylight. This was important because we needed to navigate between 3 sandbanks, too shallow even for our tender with outboard motor.

Time flew by and it was already dark. The moon was only a very narrow crescent, not providing the light needed for navigation. Thus, I asked Kas to ask a the restaurant guy if one of his friends can bring us back to our boat because they know the sandbanks very well. We got an agreement and later they pulled our tender with us over to MaRe. I was relieved, and slept pretty well considering that we were at anchor. During the night the swell smoothed down and we had a glassy sea in the morning.

Today, we sailed with engines in almost only glassy sea to Puerto di Carti. About Puerto di Carti I need to say that there are several dwellings with the same name. I identified one place using Google maps. The structure I saw in Google Maps matched with what I saw in the Navionics map. That there is more than one Puerto di Carti, we learned already yesterday in phone calls from Carlos, “my” taxi driver from Panama City.

About 2 month ago, Carlos answered a related question that he drives with a mini bus 7 people, luggage, and provision to Puerto di Carti. Yesterday, he declined to go to Puerto di Carti to pick up friends who need to go to the airport in Panama City, because he might lose his taxi license. This, because Puerto di Carti is part of Guna Yala, the land of the Guna, with special privileges. I most likely have to give up the idea of having friends brought to and picked up to Puerto di Carti. Needs a bit more investigations.

Food provisioning is not possible. Some basic food only is available. Thus, provisioning is best made in Panama City. This also matches statements of other sailors. As an emergency it could be possible to go by private car from Linton Bay Marina to Sabatinas, where the is a smaller Rey supermarket. The privat car I know its cheaper than a taxi. It might cost maybe 40 – 50 USD.

From there we headed north to the Lemon Cays (I used this name before and I should have used “Eastern Lemon Cays” they are NE of the Lemon Cays.) We tried to inside through 3 possible channels from the W of the group of islands. But gave up. The water depths seems not to be deep enough. There were 3 cats to be seen inside, most likely cats with dagger board keeps or those with almost no keels this cannot sail high into the wind like MaRe. She has a draft of 1.3 m and sails 35 deg close hauled and still makes good speed.

We used for the approach the Bauhaus Panama guide, which normally is good but here I gave up for safety reasons. The Navionics charts are extremely poor quality in general. Based on my experience they don’t improve their charts at all except publishing comments of other sailors. In the Bocas del Toro, there is even a rather big white area marked “UNSURVEYED” in a map i just bought a year ago. They don’t bothers to get get even the information of the Bauhaus Panama Guide into their maps. Buying updates of Navionics maps simply doesn’t make sense; but once and keep for the next 10 years. It’s time for OpenSeaMaps. I will have a look how I can contribute to this project. (I already use OpenStreetMaps.)

Yesterday when we approached a possible channel by staying clear of breaking wave areas, we had between 5 – 10m of water under MaRe but sailed in far inside an area, which is indicated as -30 cm – 0 cm.

We then decided to drop the anchor outside the Lemon Cays at 7 – 8 m of water into sandy ground. It’s a bit a rolly anchorage but a cat does not really roll, but swings a bit. Not uncomfortable at all.

The moment we completed anchoring, a tender with a group of young local men came to see if we have any kind of problems. They offered us to guide us through the possible entrance channels but I kindly rejected. They mention there is always 2 m of water. This for me is a NO-GO depth. They confirmed that our anchorage is safe only a bit “yole yole” (guna language for wiggle, wobble, shaking…) Tomorrow we will go into the Cays using our tender.

During the sail to Rio Sadres, the sea is completely flat. Wind waves of 1 and no swell at all.

Quite some dugouts are to be seen with men fishing. They are quiet distant from the next island. However they should be able to read the clouds and return in time. On the other side they handle dugouts so extremely well that they should have no problems in 4 – 5 Bft winds with waves of up to a meter. A part of an empty bottle they do have always in their dugouts to get water out. Dugouts always leak through little cracks.

The guna guys from Saladup told us that we can get the most important food (bread, fruits, etc.) in Rio Sadres. Thus, we are heading towards that little island town and see what’s possible. It’s only 10 NM from our anchorage and a third is done already.

If we cannot get what we need, I have to extend the route by a few WPT to Puerto di Carti. The final approach to Puerto di Carti is already in the system.

To see the details you can zoom into the map to be seen in the PW link.

After a small lunch, Ste and I went swimming. I used fins, mask and snorkel; Ste without anything.

A quick check of the anchor and we headed towards the island when Ste just went on land a bit before me.

When I arrived, I younger guy approached and worth my “fluent” Spanish we just had some simple conversations. He also invited me to sit down on a simple bench made of a coconut tree. Then he asked me if I want to have a coconut as a drink. I was baffled because such kind of things happened to me for the first time in guna yala. So he asked another guy to get 2 “pipas” (coconuts) to drink for Ste, who came back towards me, and me. The guy just climbed the coconuts tree barefoot and his hands. Unbelievable skillful. His fellow guns canned him a monkey. Two coconuts felt down and where opened for us with a few skillful strokes of a machete. Delicious!

Then we watched them cutting out the wood of stem to create a dugout. Tools: a shorter and longer machete and an axe.

Other sailors, from the two other boats came to the island was well. Thus, the people dispersed a bit. A guy with 2 bonitos came us. I think he offered them. As he was drunk I declined carefully. Then he invited us to go bonito fishing. This was such a surprise to me that I first didn’t believe. It turned out, he is serious and another guy was the driver of the boat. Thus we boarded their boat after I first helped to push the boat from the beach into deep enough water.

We quickly went to MaRe to pick up Kas and Kon. With Kas we also had in interpreter. Then we took off with quite some speed, and went through gab in the reef. As soon as we were outside, the guy at the outboard motor had a fishing line around one hand to troll a lure. Bonitos are fast swimming fish, thus trolling with an outboard motor was not too fast. We caught 2 more bonitos and one got off of the hook just before we could get it in.

Then we return to MaRe and told them, we will come later at land.

What will happen there? No clue, but let’s see.

… sunny waters … Between the islands of the San Blas archipelago.

Since around midnight we have a north-easterly wind of 4 Bft blowing. My SuperWind generator created almost all the power we consumed board during the night.

After breakfast, MaRe was cleared up for departure and at 0915 we lifted the hook and went around the northern corner of Ogoppiradup. There were for the wind from broadreach already and we started sailing with the genoa. When we finally went on course of the longest leg of today, the AWA was only 140 deg STB. A pity because that’s not enough to set up a butterfly configuration. Such a one would have given us 1 – 2 KN more.

Hydrogenerator is lowered into the water and we charge batteries.

Perfect sailing!

When we were at Irpin’s place yesterday, Ste ordered a dinner for 4 for today 1700.

But before the dinner we went to Turtle island, also called BBQ island, the most NE island of the San Blas archipelago. When we were asked to pay 3 USD per person on top of a drink, which we considered, we decided to leave immediately again.

We went towards the outer reef but decided not to go that far because the waves were pretty high and there was a very long and very shallow area between us and the outer reef. Kon and Kas snorkeled around whereas Ste and I, waiting in the tender, discussed about the research we did for our doctorates. What a place to discuss such matters!

At around 1630 we prepared to go for our dinner. It turned out that noon of us saw the need of taking beach sandals along. Yesterday we carried them around but never used them. Thus today, no beach sandals but just walking barefoot to the restaurant at the other side of the island for our barefoot dinner.

When we arrived at beach where we wanted again to leave the tender, we greeted the guys who remembered us and received a warm welcome again. It was just a wonderful thing.

We then walked along the typhoon highway, the approx. 2m wide, shell framed path to the other side. Due to the rain today, there was even more deeper water at some spots of the typhoon highway.

When we arrived at the restaurant, a coconuts palm tree leaves covered table for about handful of people at least, we received again a very warm welcome and on the table they were for each of us a coconut chopped open, so we could drink the delicious and refreshing coconut water.

Then Irpin’s brother in law showed us how he peels the very inner part of a coconut of it’s shell without breaking it. He does with a machete and hits the coconut with a precision of less the 3 mm. Incredible skillful!

The starter was a mixture of a smoked fish with a few vegetables and young, thinly sliced, and fried platanos. What a great taste!

The main dish was fish and spiny lobster with sauteed zucchinis, rice, and a cabbage sale with small pieces of aubergine. Excellent as well. Dessert was just Irpin’s homemade coconuts cake; simply a great taste.

We had longer talks with Irpin and learned a bit about his life. After school – 6 year compulsory school – he went to Panama City. There he started a career leading from dishwasher to assistant cook, to chief cook, to restaurant manager. Then he wanted to make a new “project” a he calls it. He went to his grandfather’s island Banedup and got from the guna administration, the permission to start a cooking business. He lives on Banedup with his brother, sister, an brother in law to develop his project, which also includes growing various vegetables and fruits on Banedup as well as on Ogoppiradup, an uninhabitated island close to where MaRe’s anchor is dropped.

Asked about his wife, we learned, she is living in Panama city to enable proper education for their 4 children, aged between 2 and 20.

What a life he had and has at 44.

Back to the place where we left the MaRe’s tender. We had a drink. Ice cold Panamanian cola and chats with Galileo, Perez, and Jose. Jose is a single have sailor from Brazil, Perez and Galileo, are guna fisher.

Again when it was dark, we headed back to MaRe where we arrived safely.

I had to prepare the routing for the next day to Salardup, SW from here.

After magnificent sunrise behind the clouds, followed by sunlight through holes in the clouds, the weather decided that there’s too much water in the sky, and opened the valves to let it pour down.

The surface being mottled with millions of rain drops hitting it, creating drops jumping up from the surface, and creating the same time tiny little circular waves, fascinates me always. Seeing this I should be happy.

But, there’s always a”but”, I would like to do laundry and charge the batteries. No wind, no sun, but consumption of electrical power depletes even the 5 service batteries.

Finally started the washing machine and hope for the end of the rain.

Around 1630 we took the tender across to Banedup, the bigger island on the other side.

A group of men at the beach, were very friendly and helpful. They advice is to put our tender onto the sandy beach weather they stood.. This was good, because just before the sandy beach was a little drop-off of about half a meter. Thus we could carry the tender up into the dry area of the beach.

“Where do you come from?”, “What’s your name?”, etc. were the first questions, which introduced a warm and welcome atmosphere. Ste asked via Kas, who speaks fluent Spanish, about the restaurant supposed to be on the other side of the islands. One of the men walked with us towards a path crossing the island when suddenly another man came. He speaks fluent English and if turned out he is the owner of the restaurant on the other side. So he walked with us to show us his restaurant. He is also the baker of the coconut bread I bought recently when I was here for the first time.

The path across the island was a bit more than a meter wide. On both sides “framed” with white shells. I was surprised how good this looks. About half way, water over floated the path. Just rainwater from the heavy rain this morning. Then we reached his part of the island. I was surprised that an area of about half of football field was empty. No palm trees only here and the remains of trunks. I asked what happened and he answers he wants to make volleyball fields etc to attract guest, especially young people. He also wants to built cottages in the shallow sea as cabins for guests.

Pretty business oriented. That’s good on one side, but I wonder what the effect to nature is. How are his cottages at land protected against storms blowing landward?

Ste made an appointment for a dinner tomorrow evening. Asking for bread, he asked if we have flour because his supplier didn’t show up for a few days due to the wind and rain in the last days. He wanted to come around 1900 to MaRe so we could give him flour for bread for the next morning.

Then we headed back. An attempt to go around the northern corner of the islands failed. Too dense trees until the water. But what we saw there was shocking. We saw an incredible amount of plastic just washed at the shores. The few people living on Banedup, have no chance to collect the garbage of our so incredible civilized society. This world will drown in plastic garbage.

Back to the side of the islands where our tender was, conversations with the guna started again. Additionally, except me, all had beer to let them make a tiny little business. Then there was an Israeli, who arrived after us. He sailed all the way from Israel to San Blas archipelago in his 29 ft boat. “Chapeau!”

Then we headed back to MaRe. A straight line from a point at the beach to MaRe was my navigation aid to avoid too shallow water and lose a blade of the outboard motor prop.

Safe and sound did we return to MaRe.